Anselm Pahnke

Anselm Nathanael Pahnke (30 years old) was born on the 14th of April 1989 as the second of five children.

Anselm Pahnke: Elsewhere – News from the Future.

Anselm Pahnke grew up with his four siblings in a wooden house built by his parents near Hamburg. In the wide garden and the neighbouring woods, he was able to develop his urge for discovery at an early age and curiously face ever-growing challenges. At the age of 14, he went on his first bicycle trip to Freiburg with a school friend and began to record special life moments with his video camera.

After a voluntary social year in Canada, Anselm Pahnke studied oceanography and geophysics at the University of Hamburg. The day after he graduated with his bachelor’s degree, he began a bicycle journey that took him through 40 countries for three years. The impulse to travel for a few weeks turned into several years and the world became his home.

After his return, Anselm produced a film from his personal recordings with a small team without financial means, showing the power of Africa, the intense experiences and the inner development of such a journey. With 100,000 visitors, „Elsewhere. Allein in Afrika“ was the most watched German-language documentary in the cinemas in 2020, although this film was never planned. Anselm Pahnke personally presented his travel documentary in 150 cinemas and addressed the profound questions of the audience.

In the meantime, Anselm has been on stage as a speaker at more than 200 events. He reports on the experiences on his journey, which has not only taken him around the globe, but also to himself. As a speaker, he also inspires his audience at meetings and conferences, in business talks and at events.

„Nothing is stronger than people who do something because they want to do it.“

In 2022, Anselm founded a residential and cultural project in the Black Forest, where over 40 people will live. How can I create a trusted future and how do we get from the „I“ back to the „we“?

Anselm Pahnke Lectures

The focus of his lectures is his journey to Africa with all his experiences, complemented by valuable impulses:

• Determination. On the happiness of facing death.
  Overcoming limits and transforming fear into courage.
• Vision training: Strategies for individual optimism.
  Nothing is as practical as a good theory. Five ways to well-being.
• When is it worth thinking and when is it better not to?
  Making decisions when I have little information, little time and the future is uncertain. Qualitative questions make the difference.
• Inner confidence – on the fine art of self-leadership.
  How we can re-motivate ourselves in challenging times.
• Intuition – Everything you need, you have within you.
  Look specifically for the important things and consciously block out everything else.
• Renunciation and self-efficacy
  How less leads to more and inspires our self-confidence.
• Enthusiasm: Living safely or experiencing yourself?
  Man lives by passion, he merely exists by reason. In this perfected world, it helps to do things that cannot be explained.
• From I to We. Experiment of a sustainable community
  Leaving the comfort zone together for a pioneering project. Founding and implementing a housing and cultural project.

Anselm Pahnke: „I chose the other way. Everything you need, you have within you.“

„Have little, be much“

One day after handing in his Bachelor’s thesis, Anselm Pahnke made the decision to travel South Africa. Suddenly separated from his two companions, he ventured alone into the South African Kalahari Desert – on a bicycle. Step by step, a breathtaking journey through the African continent developed, always close to the people and nature. No water to buy, travelling under your own power, camping in nature – this journey is unpredictable and challenging.

After serious illnesses, captivity and 3,000 kilometres against the wind through the Sahara, it is clear: Africa is also powerful, colourful and full of life. A deep love for this huge continent grows in Anselm Pahnke, a deep trust in his fellow human beings and himself, as well as the realisation that he does not have to be lonely alone.

The traveller continued his journey, in which spontaneity and curiosity are his closest companions, along the historic Silk Road in Asia. Through Iran and Tajikistan to Tibet, over the Himalayas to Myanmar, across the Southeast Asian island states, until after three years and 40,000 KM his journey ends in Sydney – from there he flies back to his hometown Hamburg.

„Forward to the essential: I embraced the unknown and it became my friend.“

This story unsettles and inspires rethinking, because the best preparation for Anselm’s journey around the world was that he had no preparation. So Anselm Pahnke went from thinking to acting on his own, without any detours.

Every day Anselm Pahnke experienced that life is not safe, but in this uncertainty he felt particularly alive. His senses are sharpened and he is aware of his surroundings with great clarity. One’s own experiences determine our actions, guide our impulses and create a confidence that cannot be gained through the knowledge of others. Experiencing this first-hand has become his life’s treasure and his emotional foundation. At the beginning of his journey Anselm was still searching, soon he only found; answers to which he knew no question before the journey.

Anselm Pahnke has experienced that a great undertaking does not have to be completely thought through in advance, that one progresses step by step, because here the path is really the goal. He inspires people not to overplan ideas and visions but to focus on the essentials and put them into practice.

Anselm does not want to be defined. Those who know him know that he sees the world with his own eyes. The eyes of someone to whom nature is closer than the city. Nevertheless, he likes to share his experiences with other people.

Customer testimonials to the lectures of Anselm Pahnke

Intuition

„Anselm gives unexpected answers, sees and reflects the world differently. I could fill an entire programme with his story and hear a pin drop when he takes one of his soulful pauses. A man who dares to empathise. People literally hang on his every word.“ – Markus Lanz – ZDF

Courage

„These life lessons of calculated risk, brought to life through Anselm’s journey, shatter the risk-averse culture of our Fortune 500 companies with their endless business planning and forecasting, while understanding the WHY of a business journey frees us to take the risks we need to achieve our business goals.“ – David Lindstrom- Bosch

Euphoria

„A lecture that touches the heart! The 70 minutes lecture flew by and I have never experienced so many different people, being so captivated by one person. Above all, Anselm gives each person something: confidence and new perspectives. This awakens questions that lie dormant in all of us and whose answers we carry in our hearts. His words touch our innermost being and invite us to rediscover ourselves and to feel and live our own self-efficacy again. Thank you, Anselm!“– Jessica Harrenberg – JobRad